By F. Andrew Wolf, Jr.
Democrats rose last Monday morning to a somewhat bipolar sense of relief and “now what do we do?” After spending years denying Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, the president’s decision to withdraw saved them from the further burden of denying the obvious about their man in the White House. Moreover, the brief “uncivil” war regarding Biden’s prospects against Trump has ended in a truce – they have so far at least lowered their defenses and rallied around our incumbent VP, Kamala Harris.
Now there is a new controversy with which the Democrats must contend: Who will get the nod as the party’s vice-presidential candidate? One thing is certain, Harris’ connections and affinity for the more radical left faction of her party will likely generate new concerns to argue about. This will only add to already existing issues for a budding campaign, which, as of this writing, continues to lag its opposition even sans the drag of Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee.
The Democratic Party Identity Crisis
At this early stage of the nomination process, evidence is already emerging of a less-than-democratic approach being adhered to, and Kamala Harris appears to be garnering momentum as the likely choice. Yet the vice president’s nomination poses some rather inconvenient questions about the Democratic Party. Who are they today – and who will they be tomorrow?
They will lean left – but how far?
When reality finally dawned on the Democrats during the contentious 2020 primaries and they realized the need for a candidate nowhere near the extreme left, it was the first true indication that defeating Donald Trump was being taken seriously.
Running a socialist – such as Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — against Trump was finally seen as something just short of political suicide for the party. They needed a candidate who could be at least perceived as close to a centrist as possible and thus gain some distance from the party’s more radical left wing. Looking for such a candidate left little room for maneuvering – Biden kept rising to the top of everyone’s very short list.
Fast forward to 2023 and the party chose the route of least resistance – the now-incumbent Biden was their candidate yet again. But now, after the abysmal debate performance and ultimate withdrawal of the president, the party has been forced to tack back to the dangerous territory of a candidate much further to the left.
Kamala Harris – The Only Choice for Democrats
Though Harris is no more popular than Biden – even if Democrats won’t admit it now – and the early polls show her trailing the former president, it seems there will be no further search for a more suitable candidate to run against Trump.
In a party that has wedded itself to toxic left-wing ideologies about race (DEI comes to mind) it would be impossible to embark upon a process whereby a moderate and thus more electable candidate could be found – and there are several.
In other words, a political party that has embraced as one of its guiding principles diversity, equity, inclusion, and intersectionality has adopted much of what puts America in peril today – the “catechism” of wokeness. Moreover, no party that looks to African-American women as one of its most loyal voter groups would even consider being disrespectful to a woman of color in that manner. That also would border on political suicide.
To note this is to appreciate and laud Vice President Harris contending for the most powerful office in the world because of her race and gender. Furthermore, early polls mean virtually nothing at this juncture of the run-up to the election. Voters have not had the opportunity yet to experience Harris as a presidential candidate. But that moment will come as they listen to her rather than the media’s filtered interpretation of her. And one more caveat is warranted – the Republican Party should take heed not to underestimate her. Vice President Harris’ candidacy brings a new spirit to the Democratic Party and a reason to relinquish its recent predilection for divisiveness.
Can She Win Over the Voters?
Given the last four years of her vice presidency, two truths are known: She has not performed well with virtually any issue she was given the responsibility to solve, and her popularity ratings hovered somewhere just below Biden’s.
Here is primarily what she has going for her as the candidate of a party whose voters believe what the mainstream media have fed them for the last eight years (that Trump is a threat to democracy in general and America in particular): She represents a viable alternative to the “Biden issues.” Thus she will engender enthusiasm, even if it’s really just repressed desperation.
The essential issue with the Harris candidacy is that with her, the Democratic Party will be represented by someone who politically is further left than anyone with a shot of winning the presidency at least in the last 50 years except Barack Obama. The difference between the two is that Obama, whose oratory was brilliant, could successfully pose as a “uniter” while actually scoring political gains by doing the opposite.
Harris is not in the former president’s league in that regard.
She occasionally meets with success posing as a moderate, but she is nonetheless closely tethered to those elements in the party that advocate for policies that divide us along racial, social, and economic lines.
No matter what the oddsmakers claim in Las Vegas about the coming election, given the political twists and turns already in 2024, only a fool would venture a prediction about November 5. But one thing is certain; unless the Democratic Party relinquishes its affinity for dangerous ideologies like DEI, it is hauling cargo that will spoil before it reaches its destination this fall.
~Andrew Wolf, Jr. is director of The Fulcrum Institute, an organization of scholars dedicated to the classical liberal tradition. He has also been published stateside in American Spectator, The Thinking Conservative, and American Thinker, and abroad in International Policy Digest, Times of Israel, and The Daily Philosophy, among others.
